It’s no secret that American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer hates the LGBT community. The former director of the Idaho Values Alliance has made a full fledged career out of spewing his poison, both here in Idaho and on the national stage. So it should come as a surprise to no one that Fischer is busy defending one of the main people behind Uganda’s “Kill the gays” bill.

For those that don’t know, for years, Lively has been perpetuating the myth that gays were responsible for the Holocaust . Worse yet, he continues to link the struggle for homosexual equality with pedophilia, both here in America and around the world. Despite having his theories discredited by any number of scholars, psychologists and historians, Lively continues to find an audience among the uneducated, the superstitious and those who use their religion as a tool for hate.

In 2009, Lively met with Ugandan government leaders and headlined a conference promoting his hateful theories. It was from that conference that Uganda’s bill emerged. His involvement in the bill, which has since been cleverly rewritten to specifically exclude capital punishment wording, is well documented and undeniable. In fact, as the New Civil Rights points out, Lively has went so far as to call the bill,”a huge blessing” for Uganda and for him personally.

Now that Romney is clearly the GOP presidential candidate nominee, it will be interesting to see just how his campaign handles the publicity.

For his part, VanderSloot has created a website dedicated to responding to his critics. www.frankvanderslootresponse.com includes his original response to the Greenwald article, a letter from the Idaho State Attorney General’s office as well as an excerpt from blog comments made by Post-Register publisher Roger Plothow.

In the article, published this afternoon on Boing Boing, May-Chang offers more details on the history of Frank VanderSloot’s activities, as well as her thoughts on what she calls the “whitewashing” of the Idaho CEO’s “tarnished image”.

Among the nuggets contained in May-Chang’s piece: a quote from former Post-Register reporter Peter Zuckerman regarding how he felt during the Eastern Idaho Boy Scout scandal.

May-Chang also includes a paragraph from The Boise Weekly in which reporter Ray Ring wrote in 2008 that Melaleuca’s call center was being used to help persuade California voters to support California’s Prop 8.

“HRC spokesman Dan Rafter tells BuzzFeed that “Mitt Romney can’t have it both ways – saying repeatedly he opposes discrimination against gay Americans but then employing Frank VanderSloot, whose harsh anti-gay views are quite clear. The Republican hopeful should immediately fire VanderSloot to show the country he means what he says,” writes BuzzFeed’s Rosie Gray.

The nation’s largest LGBT civil rights organization is calling on GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney to fire his campaign’s national finance co-chair.

In a petition sent out by the Human Rights Campaign last week, the organization told supporters,”VanderSloot helped bankroll the Prop 8 campaign, and has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to anti-LGBT causes. He spearheaded a heinous billboard campaign against Idaho Public Television for airing content that “promote[s] the homosexual lifestyle.”

HRC spokesman Fred Sainz tells The Advocate,”Romney’s relationship with VanderSloot “speaks volumes about how Mitt Romney truly feels about LGBT people. He added that the candidate “can no longer get away with saying he opposes discrimination against LGBT Americans while simultaneously working with someone as viciously anti-LGBT as Frank VanderSloot.”

“Your [Romney’s] campaign reflects your values — this is your moment to state once and for all that you will not tolerate discrimination against LGBT people. Fire Frank VanderSloot immediately and return the money he has donated to your campaign,” says the HRC letter.

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